Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

With a growing number of celebrity sign-ups, Twitter is well and truly taking off (in a way I didn’t expect at first) and this has led to many people fearing for the great service’s integrity. Will it become a bloated, meaningless “Who has the longest dick (the most friends)” sort of social network… you know, like MySpace? Well I don’t think it will, or can, ever happen. Let me explain why.

If you don’t know what twitter is let me first say; where the hell have you been the last six months then explain to you that it is a “micro-blogging” social network where users have just 140 characters to answer the eternal question; “What are you doing?” (although this can, and should, be extended to “what are you going to do?” “What have you just done?” and “What are you thinking about?”). These posts are known as Tweets. This simplicity has caused Twitter to slowly but surely break the boundaries of a cult phenomenon and begin addicting ordinary Joe Public. The cunning bastard lovechild of narcissism and voyeurism has drawn much ridicule from those souls who just don’t get it but one thing is for sure; Twitter has well and truly succeeded in becoming a fully fledged social network. One that, despite it’s simplicity, has single-handedly wiped out the glaring flaws exhibited by it’s bigger, more popular peers; MySpace and FaceBook.

Where MySpace, and to a lesser extent, FaceBook have failed is the way in which users connect. If someone on MySpace requests your friendship and you accept you’re pretty much on equal ground. You’ll see what they do and they’ll see what you do. But how often is this what you really want? Obviously they want to see what you’re doing (They requested the friendship) but most of the time you’re not really interested in what they’re doing (If you were, you’d have added them, right?). FaceBook sort of cured this by introducing the effective use of local networks where the actions of people in your local network will feature more heavily than those of someone half way around the world. Moreover, what you see in the friend feed is a lot more customisable so you can tone down the bits and pieces from people you’re less interested in. But at the core of it lies that same old level footing based relationship where the fact you allowed them to be your friend automatically makes you their friend. This is prone to becoming diluted.

Twitter, by it’s very nature excludes all possibility of this unless it’s what the user expressly desires. If someone follows you, that’s it. You don’t ever see anything about them again unless you choose to follow them. The really beautiful thing about this, from a community standpoint, is that it has the potential to form super tight and focused social networks where all participants get what they want and things are kept to an unprecedented level of relevance. The proverbial Leeroy Jenkins won’t show up and ruin the thing for everyone.

I use Twitter purely as a social medium. My goal is not to collect followers, nor is it to follow as many people as I can. My focus lies in creating strong, quality connections with quality users in my chosen arena (Web design and geekery). As such I follow only 74 people (at the time of writing) and that list is constantly being trimmed and weeded to ensure the quality of the community. (Sorry if I un-followed you. Nothing personal.) The people I follow all provide me with interesting and helpful information and don’t display poor Twetiquette (Twitter Etiquette). Using the service this way, however is only one side of the coin.

I mentioned, in the first paragraph that a growing number of celebrities are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and they use it for a wholly different purpose. Where many people, myself included, use Twitter as a social medium with a ‘quality, not quantity’ approach to community, people like Stephen Fry use it as a soapbox where their goal is to amass a large, focused audience. They want the maximum number of people to know where they are and what they’re doing because that is their bread and butter. Recently Stephen Fry pimped his talk at the Regent Street Apple Store over twitter. An exercise that would have been truly asinine had he not cultivated over 150,000 followers. Of course, his existing fame won’t have harmed his cause.

So we see two very different uses for Twitter as a social network, but as distinct as these two roles are, they do sometimes overlap in a venn diagram sort of way. Take Elliot Jay Stocks for example. He is a valuable member of the web design community (I follow his tweets) but he also has a public speaking schedule that reads like a cross between a dream round-the-world vacation and a supremely unconscionable pain in the arse. Details of these events still need to reach the widest possible audience so it makes sense for him to strive to achieve many followers.

The reason Twitter won’t rot and dilute like other social networks is because the differing motives of it’s users don’t conflict. One group of users doesn’t exist at the expense of the other. If people want to friend-hoard and follow me to boost their numbers, they’re welcome to do it. It makes no difference to me what so ever. People get exactly what they want out of twitter. It’s all things to all men.

So I’ll throw open the discussion; Do you use twitter? If so, how do you like to use it? Do you disagree with me? Do you think Twitter is just a flash in the pan? I’d love to know what you think.

Dan